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Papiness

Boston wins, 3-1, Lester tops Wainwright once again, and the Sox head home ahead by a game, with a chance to wrap up baseball for the year in Wednesday night’s Game Six. That’s the short line, in an account perhaps shrivelled by the welcome tautness and economy of last night’s pitching duel, in a game without errors (the teams had together committed eleven in prior play) or base-path melodrama, that got itself over with in a brisk two hours and fifty-two minutes. Big Papi continued to astound, with a run-scoring double on his first pitch of the evening, two singles, and a line-drive out. He is batting .733 for the series—as against a cumulative .151 for the rest of the Boston hitters—and now sometimes gives the impression that he is stopping by to play in these little entertainments, in the manner of a dad joining his daughter’s fifth-grade softball game. When he came up to bat once again in the sixth, Cardinals’ starter Adam Wainwright essayed some uncharacteristic little pauses and stutter steps on the mound, trying to throw off that implacable swing. It was like trying to disconcert winter.

Wainwright struck out ten batters in his seven innings, and bore a look of earnest excitement while out there. For me, the game’s turning point was a trifling at-bat in the seventh by Sox shortstop Stephen Drew, who came up with the score still tied, 1-1, and a teammate on first. Drew’s lone hit in the series to date had been a comical bloop in the opener, which somehow fell untouched between the mound and home plate, but I noticed now that Wainwright had become a fraction uncertain in his work, and wondered why. The count went from one-and-two to two-and-two, then three-and-two, and the critical walk ensued. The next Red Sox hitter, catcher David Ross, batting in the eighth slot, whacked a ground-rule double just inside the foul line in left field, scoring both base runners and winning the game, it turned out, and possibly this series as well. Thinking about it afterward, I decided that it wasn’t Drew who was discombobulating Wainwright but some unwanted twinges of weariness and perhaps even a passing vision of himself forever in the annals as a valorous two-time World Series loser.

Jon Lester, who has a columnar neck and powerful arms, appears locked away when working, firing and backing up to the mound and firing again—fastballs and change-ups, for the most part—and he scarcely turned his head to watch his lone mistake, a fourth-inning homer by Matt Holliday, depart the premises. He has now done in Wainwright twice, in critical meetings, and might even be back on Thursday, if needed, and ready to do it again. That would guarantee an M.V.P. in any year but Papi’s.

Photograph: Michael Ivins/Boston Red Sox/Getty

Roger Angell, a senior editor and a staff writer, has contributed to The New Yorker since 1944, and became a fiction editor in 1956.